A valet parking method or a valet parking system is, in particular, to be understood to mean a method or a system in which a driver of a vehicle is able to drop it off in a predetermined drop-off spot, whereupon the vehicle is parked in an automated manner or by service staff and made available to the driver again on request or schedule. The present invention specifically relates to a valet parking method and to a valet parking system in which vehicles are parked by an automated system. The vehicles move autonomously, i.e., without assistance by a human driver, to an assigned parking spot and back to a pick-up position.
Valet parking systems are fully automatic driver assistance systems for parking facilities which, usually by communicating with a central control unit, e.g., a parking facility management system (server), make it possible to drive a vehicle from an entrance area of a parking facility to a parking area without the action of a driver in order to permanently park the vehicle there. The advantage of valet parking systems is that, in contrast to automatic parking facilities including conveying systems, existing facilities do not have to be further equipped to afford the driver the increased convenience of freeing him or her from the search for a parking spot. Furthermore, systems are known which allow the driver to call his or her vehicle over a distance, so that it returns to a pick-up area fully automatically, where the driver may take charge of it.
German Patent Application No. DE 10 2012 021 282 A1 describes a method for coordinating the operation of motor vehicles driving in a fully automated manner. A trajectory is ascertained for each motor vehicle from host vehicle information and surroundings information of the motor vehicle. Thereafter, it is ascertained whether at least one coordination condition is present. A coordination condition is present, for example, when a bottleneck occurs. Trajectory data are exchanged between the motor vehicles via a communication link. This is followed by a check of the trajectory data of the motor vehicles for conflicts which are present due to a spatial and temporal overlap of the trajectories of at least two of the motor vehicles and/or due to at least one of the motor vehicles not reaching the target position. If a conflict is present, an adaptation of the trajectory of at least one of the motor vehicles involved in the conflict takes place.
Moreover, conventional variants of valet parking systems shift essential tasks of surroundings detection into the parking garage infrastructure and, in this way, implement a “remote control” of a vehicle in that the trajectory from the starting position to the target position is calculated by the central control unit and transmitted to the vehicle. The vehicle subsequently follows this trajectory under control of the central control unit, the progress being tracked with the aid of the localization by the infrastructure-bound surroundings sensors and possible present odometry.
U.S. Pat. Appl. No. US2010/0156672 A1, for example, describes a method for autonomously parking a vehicle in a parking area including a plurality of parking spaces. With the aid of sensors provided on the parking area, a parking space for the vehicle is ascertained from the plurality of parking spaces. A position and a movement of the vehicle are detected by guide sensors on the parking area. A trajectory is created based on a present position of the vehicle and based on pieces of information with respect to the ascertained parking space and transmitted to the vehicle. The trajectory is modified when an obstacle appears on the trajectory of the vehicle.
German Patent Application No. DE 10 2012 016 800 A1 describes a method for ascertaining a vehicle position of a vehicle to be localized within a predefined driving area in mapped surroundings, the vehicle position being determined by an evaluation of position data of at least one predetermined component of the vehicle, and the position data being provided by, in particular, a plurality of position detection sensors fixedly situated within the mapped surroundings. The present invention also relates to a corresponding device for ascertaining a vehicle position. In this way, for example, piloted driving in a parking garage is possible.
The present invention is directed to automatic valet parking systems including infrastructure-bound sensor systems, the associated sensors being used to localize the vehicles driving autonomously (hereafter also referred to as “AVP vehicles”) within a predefined parking facility managed by the valet parking system, and to synchronize their positions, in particular based on an existing digital map. With such systems, it is important from an economic perspective to minimize the number of surroundings sensors in order to enable a cost-effective system implementation. However, in some circumstances it is no longer ensured that it is always possible to localize the AVP vehicles with the necessary accuracy. The risk exists that higher deviations may arise in following the particular trajectory since it is necessary, in particular in areas which are detected by the sensors with a reduced accuracy, to resort to odometry that is subject to drift in order to localize the vehicle.
Within areas in which it is not possible to carry out the localization with sufficient accuracy due to lesser coverage of the areas traveled by the vehicle by the surroundings sensors, or due to higher measuring errors which may be caused, e.g., by a large distance of the AVP vehicle from the sensor, or by the detection range being obstructed by parked vehicles, the vehicle odometry is integrated into the process to track movements of the vehicle within the parking facility, e.g., on a digital map. Since the odometry is usually subject to measuring errors, which result in a drift effect in the anticipated vehicle position, in particular narrow passageways of a parking garage are still only able to be negotiated with high collision risk. This risk is further intensified when the trajectory planning of a central control unit shifts the overlapping area of the trajectories of two vehicles which are being autonomously moved simultaneously within the parking facility into an area which is subject to a high uncertainty with respect to the vehicle localization.